Identity in transformation in rural Egyptian villages

This research analyses how spatial planning is changing in the village of Kafr Kela al-Bab (Gharbiyya, Egypt), from which many people have migrated to Rome (Italy). The experiences acquired by transmigrants feed the local imagination about the transformation of the rural environment and, together with the flows of remittances, are leading to an abandonment of traditional building production (the fellah houses) in favour of new villas and apartments that are spreading all over the agricultural land, transforming it into a form of “rurban” milieu. If identity is an evolutionary process it is crucial to understand the outcomes arising from the in-teraction between the vernacular and the new. And it is up to the planner to identify those prac-tices and policies able to produce long-term balance between natural, built and human environ-ments, taking into account the important role that “translocal identities” could play in such a new rurban context.